My Dance with Justice

By Lydia Rose McSweeney

I love God and I know he loves me, so why can't I move beyond my past? Many have psychological fractures due to abuse and trauma that can cause conflicts between what they know is true about God and their lived experience. This book explores the importance of psychological justice by delving into the author's multiple encounters with death, grief, trauma, betrayal, sickness, and abuse. Walk with her and draw out the theological and psychological ways God has passionately brought psychological justice to her life. Tracing the threads of one's story can open a door of hope leading to a deeper and more congruent grace-filled walk with God the Father, our wonderful Savior Jesus, and the ever-present Holy Spirit. The author's prayer is that her vulnerability might give readers courage to find their own voice and begin to map out their own story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jan 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385205356

Lydia Rose McSweeney

Lydia Rose McSweeney is married to her devoted husband John and is mother of four incredible children, Jessica, Joseph, Benjamin, and Rachel. She holds a master’s of applied theology from Carey Baptist College, New Zealand. She is passionate about psychological justice and inspiring others towards deeper intimacy with God the Father and Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

Book preview

Season 1

Identity Formation

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. (Isa 53:2)

Writing about my journey with Ben was the hardest chapter of this book to compose. It took three months before I could sit down and even attempt to write. I went through many boxes of tissues, walked countless hours, and hid behind glasses to conceal my bloodshot eyes.

This is part of my story, and I will fully recount the remarkable miracle that my Father did for Ben in the following chapters. I begin telling part of it here as one example from my life where our present reality sometimes clashes with the reality and/or desire of what we expect from God. Another word for this is incongruence. I will use this word throughout the following chapters as it is a helpful definition of what happens when our circumstances shout a different voice to what we think we know. We are human, and we live on this side of eternity. On this side, there will be pain, heartache, and sometimes the deepest anguish a soul can endure. Sometimes our lived reality, the truths we know in the Scriptures, and the theology we hold does not match up. Where they do not match up, are there ways they can be bridged to bring them closer together? Can we cross this bridge back and forth and know that there will come a day when we will know as we are known?

The impact of my experience with Ben by the pond uncovered a deep and crippling shame about who I was. For as long as I can remember, I have felt shame about existing. Deep down, I have believed I am a burden to people. In light of that, this has caused me to try to prove a bit more, be more, just to be on the planet—always saying sorry for being here, for being in the way. It wasn’t until I studied psychological theory that I finally understood this state of being. It is due to having a shame-based identity. That is, I don’t feel shame about something I have done; I feel shame for being alive. The reason I explain this here in the beginning of my book, after such a profoundly miraculous story as Ben’s drowning, is that what happened by that pond was precipitated by a life of believing I was a mistake. I had spent my life up until that point trying to be something, anything. I was doing okay at this until Ben’s drowning in that pond. All of a sudden, I felt everyone knew my secret: I really wasn’t good enough. I had been exposed as the fraud I had been so desperately trying to hide. Well, at least that is how I suddenly felt. Uncovered. Naked. Seen.

In the following chapters, I will write about my childhood before I get to the manifold tragedies I would face in later life. I have a purpose in this. I want to show through the eyes of my childhood how the complexity of our stories have influenced who we are today, in our successes, strengths, weaknesses, and failures. These experiences pre-empt how we may face deep darkness and tragedy. Many of the issues we struggle with in our present are rooted in the development of the stories we carry in our core being. As you read my story, ask the Father to show you where my story may echo notes or steps in your own.

From our birth through to about two years of age is probably the most important period in terms of our psychological development. In these crucial years of life, we develop an attachment style to our primary caregiver. The psychological term used to describe this is attachment theory. How we attach to our mother or another primary caregiver determines how we will attach to others throughout our journey. For some of us, we attach to a mother who is present and available. Others may have an anxious mother, and some may experience violent or destructive mothering. This experience becomes our primary attachment relationship template.

Templates are designed to enable multiple reproductions. We hold within our attachment template many imprints. These imprints come from a range of events. They can be life-filling, such as moments of sheer joy; or destructive, such as being abused or facing a distressing circumstance. We carry this template and our imprints around with us, and they determine our responses and our understanding of our place in the world.

I thought I had an unremarkable childhood until I had to write my biography for a paper in my master’s program from a psychological perspective. All of a sudden, many things I had brushed aside, mainly due to my shame-based, inferior sense of being, started revealing a different God narrative. As you will see, there were many things that happened in my developmental years that were anything but unremarkable.

Mislaid Foundations

My story begins in what was a small city in Australia in 1966, where I was given a name different from the one I have now. My mother conveyed to me that an Anglican minister came into the hospital when I was born; he prophesied over me that I was called and appointed by God and separated for his work and that I would travel the world ministering the gospel. Mum was not a believer at the time, but she remembers feeling what he said was significant.

I came to Jesus when I was around seven and remember being so in love with him. He was my best friend and my secure place. I would go to church with my aunty because Mum had been deeply hurt by the church after a terrible upbringing and suffering under intense spiritual abuse. Her parents were given a substantial inheritance; however, my grandfather gave a considerable portion to the church in line with prosperity gospel teaching. It was such a devastating story because the church would betray them. They took the money and then subsequently abandoned my mum, her parents, and her five siblings. They were left with little money and were driven to live in a tent at the beach. You would think this would have turned my grandparents off to church, but no, it got worse for my mum. She would be beaten at night if she did not speak in tongues before bed. She only had one pair of shoes and one school dress. When she had head lice, teachers would put her in a corner of the classroom, and no one was allowed to play with her. I suspect God must have appeared frightening to Mum, and life must have been full of experiences of deep shame and public humiliation.

In my first year of school, my mum started working for a legal firm. She would leave at seven o’clock in the morning and arrive home around six o’clock at night. This is normality for many mothers now, but this was 1970, so it was unusual. I hated coming home alone. I was so jealous of my friends whose mums had made cookies and milk for them after school. Instead, I would come home and bottles of milk and bread would be outside our front door. My sister, brother, and I would eat the inside of the bread and drink most of the milk while watching our daily lineup of television shows. We would listen for Mum’s Morris Minor car to come down the hill at around six o’clock at night, and we would go splash water around the bathroom to make out that we had had a bath. We joked when we got older that it would have taken less energy to actually have a bath! My father was a traveling salesman and would be away regularly for days and weeks at a time.

I was not coping at school and my confidence was dwindling. I had a difficult teacher who loved telling me how immature I was, and he would belittle anyone who could not do physical sports. I remember one day trying to cut out something, and he yelled at me in front of everyone that I was so stupid for not being able to cut in a straight line. This teacher impacted my identity at such a deep level. The shame I felt during this year changed my perception of myself and my abilities. I already had labels at this point of being oversensitive and childish. I would find out later in life that this teacher was suspended because so many children had been affected by his abusive behavior. Unfortunately, this teacher’s comments marked me.

I started attending ballet and jazz classes at the age of nine. In the midst of all my confusion, dance gave me such a wonderful sense of being. I felt fully alive when I danced, and it was something I was naturally gifted to do. I loved the entire experience, from the costumes to the choreography and stage settings. I loved performing and did well in my exams. My teacher was beautiful, elegant, and an outstanding dancer. She instilled such love and passion in me for dance and fostered a deep confidence in my abilities. Dance was, and always will be, my first love.

I loved watching the television show Mary Tyler Moore and viewed Mum as very much like her. I adored my mum. She was my heroine. This would become a problem in my later years as she could not live up to my idolization of her, but it was my way of coping with her absence, I suppose. Her absence, of course, was in order to give us a better life than she had had, but I had no idea of that at such a young age. I was so lonely. The emptiness, fear, and realization that our family was different was hard, especially considering how insecure I already felt.

Most summer vacations growing up, we would go camping as a family, and I loved it. The campsite was between a lake and a beach. We became friends with other families who also came at the same time every year. Some of these friends owned boats, so I was fortunate to go water-skiing. We would also catch prawns with our hand nets, then cook them over a small fire that Dad would light on the beach. These are great memories. My friends and I would spend our time riding our bikes around the campsite and visiting the store every day to purchase sweets and ice creams.

I remember one day riding my bike back with two ice creams in my hands, then realizing I couldn’t brake properly because my hands were full. I rode full-bore into a tree! My dad found me with a twisted bike, a very sore head, and ice cream all over myself. He asked me, Are the ice creams okay? He was always taking the mickey out of me. He was champion of the dad jokes. I still have the scar from that accident. Dad and I would walk along the beach and up the cliff at the end of the beach to where the oysters were. I couldn’t stand slimy, ugly-looking oysters, but Dad loved them, and I loved being with my dad.

Digging Deeper

By the time I reached my twelfth birthday, I had already developed and accumulated many deeply held beliefs about myself and my identity. As I mentioned above, I was rooted in a shame-based identity. I felt a deep shame about who I was. Having been labeled as immature, oversensitive, and the emotionally needy one that caused many problems in the family, I loved from a place of deficit. The labels I had accumulated made me strive incessantly to find dignity through pleasing people. The friendship I had with Jesus gave me a deep stability in the midst of my anxious personality and highly programed shame-based identity during these years, but I would also come to accumulate many spiritual labels.

I wouldn’t call my mother a feminist. She had to work for our survival. But neither would I have called her a victim. She took work on and excelled. I still really admire her work ethic. I particularly loved her unbelievable lack of care for what others thought of her. She was a legal assistant and therefore a straight shooter. The black sheep of her family, I saw her as an icon of the times. Because of Mum, I have never had a sense of needing to fight as a woman in my working life, even in my academic career, and I thank her for that.

Psychological Justice

Psychological imprinting begins with how we attach with our significant caregiver (usually the mother) in the first two years of life. I have always had a felt abandonment, and this, I think, may be due to the way I attached to my mother. Having Mum work so many hours so early in my upbringing caused a perpetual state of anxiety, which I tried to replace with idolizing my mother to compensate for her not being at home with me after school.

An anxious (preoccupied) attachment with my mother meant I felt anxious to attach deeper with her. She was an amazing mum, so devoted and kind. She sacrificed her life for us, for me. Yet, I never felt secure. This was not her fault; it is, however, how I attached to her, and you will see how this influenced my decisions and responses to life and to my mother in increasingly destructive ways. Attachment styles form the basis of our attachment to God and our image of God. These early years form the psychological structures for the way we will interact with God, the world, and our self in ensuing years. I had an anxious attachment to my mother, and the consequences and effects this had on my faith development will become obvious as I outline events in my later years. The other attachment styles are secure, avoidant (dismissive or anxious-avoidant), and disorganized (or fearful-avoidant).

Dance also gave my anxious psychological self a core sense of well-being and joy. Dance touched a deep place in me where I felt fully alive. It gave me courage and confidence during these early, anxiety-filled years.

In terms of my identity in Christ (see below), this began with the prophetic word spoken over my life at infancy and was confirmed when I had a personal experience with Jesus at seven years old. My perception of God was blurry, but my relationship with Jesus was very intimate and got me through many painful situations. My relationship with Jesus gave me a sense of security amidst deeply felt psychological abandonment.

You will notice that I use this phrase identity in Christ throughout. By this phrase, I mean that because of what Jesus has done for us, this now defines the security we have in our relationship with the Trinity, the most secure attachment that we, on earth, have with another.

What’s Your Story?

What attachment style do you think you may have had? Have a think about how that may have impacted your life, your relationships, and the image of God you hold.

Stolen Identity

You know how I talked about having an unremarkable childhood? I look at my teenage years through the eyes of my adult self, and I am alarmed at how I endured so many different types of abuse and somehow categorized them as unremarkable and normal.

The crux of it is that in my early adolescence, my mum started unraveling and as a consequence so did my image of her as my heroine. I came into my twelfth year with a deepening faith but an identity that was quickly destabilizing. I was trying to begin a move to independence from Mum, but I oscillated in my confidence. The following years seemed to compound the shame I was trying to escape, and what identity in God I had left was being repeatedly challenged.

I’ll start with the spiritual abuse that I had somehow categorized as my fault. That’s perhaps the definition of abuse right there—it is never anyone else’s fault. Abuse, by its very nature, is to call blame on the victim. I had been attending a church with my aunty during my childhood. I really enjoyed the children’s Bible club and felt at home there. I was developing in my understanding of who Jesus is beyond my friendship with him into more theological spaces. This, along with my already-formed anxious attachment template, meant I was primed for the abuse that transpired.

It was just before I turned twelve, and I was eager for more of God and for more participation in the service. When the pastor offered for people to be prayed for to be baptized in the Spirit, I willingly stepped forward. I didn’t even know what this term meant. Three or four adults prayed for me for this experience for quite a while, but whatever was meant to happen didn’t. I am sure they were well meaning, but in the light of nothing happening, they then decided that it must be sin in me and started praying for whatever demons were residing in me because of my sin to be bound. When that didn’t happen, they informed me that unless I repented of my sin, I would continue to be filled with demons. They left the conversation hanging on that theological precipice. This was replayed in my head as: We can’t help you. God won’t help you. We won’t help you figure out why God won’t help you. You are now cut off from God and us until you help yourself. I was twelve, for goodness’ sake. I was already anxious and trying to step deeper into the only attachment relationship I felt secure in, with God, only to be notified that this relationship was no longer secure.

I no longer felt safe. I was alone. I concluded that no one could help me.

The only spiritual experience I had that day was that a deep fracture of abandonment occurred in my faith and an acute fear entered my relationship with God. God went from being a safe place in which I could harbor into a punishing God who at any moment could send me to hell. Hell was a big card that this particular church played to get you fearful enough to give your money, time, and absolute devotion to the church and pastor.

The age of twelve is an important milestone in any child’s psychological development as this is where the crux of our identity is solidified, including our image of God. This was an acutely abusive situation and therefore had a critical impact on my relationship with God. As a consequence, I stopped going with my aunty to this church and sought out a church closer to home that I could attend. I was in my first year of high school when I decided I wanted to be baptized. I had grown to the point in my faith where I wanted to commit more deeply to the Lord, but I also wanted to establish boundaries with my mother in terms of my journey with God.

Why, all of a sudden, is Mum in the picture?, you may ask. Mum went through something that prompted her to receive the Lord just before I was baptized. You would think this was a great moment, right? Unfortunately, everything in our home and particularly in my relationship with my mum seemed to get worse after this. Mum’s painful religious upbringing and the wounding that came from that came to the fore, needing immediate attention. This started to change the mother I had known. My free and empowering heroine was all of a sudden controlling and demanding. It felt like my relationship with God—that which had been mine—was now being judged by my mother’s belief that her understanding of God was superior. This might sound confusing, but it was like I had to choose between whether my faith in God was enough or my mother’s relationship with God was more accurate. This impacted me profoundly. I really missed the confident, strong mother I had known. She provided stability in my unpredictable world. Now I felt abandoned by the one who had given me the structure and ability to face a world I had been scarred by. I remember feeling anxious all the time. Her unpredictability caused me even greater insecurity.

I was trying to make tentative steps to solidify my sense of being in God and my identity. However, my mother would constantly plead that I evaluate all I had known in my relationship with God in light of her re-established theology. This all came to a head one day. We must have been having some sort of family event in our home, and I had stated my belief about something. My mother, in front of everyone, called me out on this and ridiculed me for thinking whatever it was I had just said. I went out onto our back porch and sat frozen on the steps, feeling numb and confused. I was trying to think and reason independently from her, and all I had done was garrison her hold on my desire to separate from her. This moment is etched in my memory as a powerful disincentive to ever voice my opinion in a situation like that again. I felt shut down and unable to reply when she humiliated me among my peers and significant others. This would become a core identity structure that, to some extent, still has a hold on me at certain times. I recognize it playing out in my present more quickly now, but it can still impact me.

Why does any of this matter now? Why is it important to highlight? Because abuse affects us deeply. I had come through an abusive encounter at my aunt’s church and had left to find a spiritual home independent from my family. However, my mother’s spiritually abusive past was now affecting not only her, but my relationship with her and my relationship with God.

Around the same time, my uncle, who resided in America, came to visit. He was a well-known international pastor and Mum’s sisters were all agog with his coming back home. At one family event, my mother got very angry at the way her heathen (their words) husband was being treated. After this event, my mother cut herself off from her birth family, and I did not see my cousins again until I was much older. This really hurt, as my younger cousins were my best friends and my aunty was like a mother to me. I would often spend the day with her when I was sick, as Mum was working, so she had become quite an influence in my life. My cousins and I would strategize to get sick on the same day so that we could all have a day off together at their house. We would raise our temperatures by sitting right next to the heaters to garrison our deceit. We didn’t have internet or mobile phones, so we would spend time creating and building things. Losing my cousins was a huge grief for me that I wasn’t really permitted to process.

Losing such an important extended family enforced an already high level of abandonment.

Thankfully, I have great social memories with my father growing up. My dad tried to normalize life and invest some fun into my love tank. I loved watching cricket with him throughout summer in the garage and rugby league with him in the winter. For years, Dad would take me to the V8 races regularly. We would get hot dogs and chips and watch the car derby. It was loud, smelly, and crowded, but I loved it! I am still a massive petrol head to this day. When I turned fifteen, I remember telling Dad I didn’t want to go to the races anymore, and I think I broke his heart. His little girl no longer wanted to smell petrol fumes with him. As I got older, my dad started taking me on his work trips during school break. I loved this time with him. We would leave very early in the morning and get sausage rolls for breakfast, stay at lovely motels, and eat delicious roast dinners.

I was terribly afraid of thunderstorms as a child, and thunderstorms in Australia, where I lived, are epic. One day, Dad took me with him and sat me on his lap as a thunderstorm came through our city. He held me and narrated a story that God was ten-pin bowling. When the lightning would strike, he would ask me to count with him until the thunder resounded; we would know if we needed to head inside if it got to one second between the lightning and thunder, as then the storm was too close. He showed me how to manage my fear and emotions, and this led to me feeling safe and brave. To this day, I absolutely love thunderstorms. I always remember sitting with my dad watching the storms and I wish they were more violent and explosive than they are where I presently live.

For all of Dad’s good intentions, however, he too was about to betray my trust in him. Another unremarkable event happened that, because of my abandonment issues, masked the abusive encounter for what it was.

I was about thirteen, and my dad took me to a campsite for a weekend. We had pitched the tent near the beach, and a couple were camping next to us. Dad and the gentlemen next door would stay up late drinking. Dad got so drunk one night that he took all his clothes off and started running around the beach naked. I sat in the tent in the dark, feeling unsafe and alone, and when I shared with Dad the next morning about what had happened, he feigned ignorance and made a big joke of it. The next night, the same thing happened. Dad’s actions affected the safety I had always felt with him. He did not take my voice seriously, and he did not put things in place to keep us safe. I was devastated by the way he made light of what, for me, was a deeply distressing position to be in. This episode in my life created a belief in me that others can silence your voice, and there is nothing you can do about it. The one with whom I should have felt the safest disregarded my dignity and my ability to do something about a situation I felt was dangerous. This added further to the lack of voice I felt with my mother in her treatment of me.

Another time when we went camping, I met a man who told me he had just got out of prison. I told him about Jesus and how he could help him. My dad found me outside the bathroom talking to him, grabbed me by my hair, and dragged me down the middle of the campground to our tent, yelling at me to stop being so stupid. I had no idea what I had done wrong. I was so naive that I had no idea this man was not a safe person. I presume Dad feared my naivete and was trying to make a point with me, but it